What should universities teach in the age of AI?

“I see it as a duty to my family,” he tells QS Insights, sharing that he returned to South Korea in 2024 to take up the position and be with his then-ailing father, after living abroad for most of his adult life.

His relative youth sets him apart from other leaders of higher education institutions.

“I believe I am probably a needle in a haystack,” he says, “the average age of a Chairman [of South Korean private institutions] is 80 years old. There are only five Chairs who are under 55 years old, including myself.”

But age isn’t the only thing that distinguishes Kang. Instead of a life in academia, Kang brings 20 years of private-sector experience in maritime economics, working as an analyst, a trader and eventually a fund manager.

It is this industry-focussed experience that has shaped his approach to tackling some of the most pressing challenges confronting the higher education space today: the existential crisis of what university is for, and AI’s impact on education.

Restructuring traditional education

Building on TU’s founding philosophy of industry-academia collaboration, Kang advocates for a fundamental reorientation of what a university is for. This question is becoming more urgent today, when the right answer to a question is just a couple of clicks away.

“Education was optimising for the wrong output. It was producing people who were excellent at finding correct answers to well-defined problems,” says Kang.

“Traditional education trained students to become good employees. Today's students must graduate with what I call ‘CEO competencies’, the ability to set the goal, design the process and execute it without waiting for permission,” he says.

For Kang, that means restructuring the curriculum to teach students how to perform in the real economy. Project-based learning that mirrors distributed team environments, as well as residency programmes where global practitioners work alongside students on real applied challenges, are prioritised at TU.

TU also puts an emphasis on financial literacy and jurisdictional awareness so that students build an understanding of how to structure work, compensation and ventures across borders.

“These are skills the market rewards and universities have yet to fully embrace,” says Kang, who emphasises that higher education needs to go beyond just preparing students for jobs.

“We are preparing them for a world where the concept of a job is being reconstructed in real time,” he says.

The borderless professional

One way to better equip students for the real world, Kang argues, is to teach them to be “borderless professionals”.

The “borderless professional” Kang describes is fluent in digital tools, financially literate, comfortable with distributed collaboration and capable of operating across time zones and jurisdictions.

“The technology now, with cryptography and with blockchain, has made this possible. I have friends 20-30 years younger than me who are solo-preneurs, and they are able to tap into the global resources,” he shares.

“This is not a niche career type. It is the direction of travel for the most valuable work in the global economy.”

For Kang, the idea also offers a potential solution to Busan’s brain drain crisis. The city where TU was founded has seen a net outflow of 60,000 young people aged 20–39 in the past 7 years (2018-2024).

According to a 2024 survey by the local government, 7 out of 10 youths are leaving due to “lack of jobs”.

Teaching students to be “borderless professionals” could stem the flow of young talent out of Busan, Kang suggests, as it opens up opportunities for youths to work for organisations beyond the local job market.

“Practical” Education

The idea of making education more closely resemble the future job market is already taking shape at TU. Kang believes that higher education should be the place where research and real-world problem-solving collide. He points to TU’s Busan International College (BIC) as an example of how the university can cement its relevance and worth for today’s students.

BIC offers undergraduate degrees in English, with specialised programmes such as AI & Computer Engineering as well as Tech Management and Innovation. It will soon offer new curricula in blockchain, maritime finance and advanced financial literacy.

Plans are underway for a living lab for students to research and solve real-world problems with data from participating corporations. Next year, BIC aims to create a residency programme where industry specialists will teach students based on what they have learned in the workplace.

“Students today cannot graduate in four years with just theory and a diploma; every semester, they should be learning something new — whether it’s a prototype being built, a business model being paid for or research that will solve problems for a city,” says Kang.

To support this learning environment, Kang emphasises that teaching staff who come on board must be tech-savvy and bring with them specialised industry knowledge.

“Any corporation will invest 3-5 years into an employee until they become productive; our job is to decrease that 3-5 years as much as possible, and that is the kind of education that will succeed in the future where it’s not just lecture-based,” he says.

“Universities must earn their relevance through what they uniquely provide: genuine community, serious mentorship, applied research infrastructure and the kind of trust that grows only from sustained human relationships,” says Kang.

“Everything else is available online, on demand, at a fraction of the cost.”